Blog 636 – 05.18.2017
The Magic Of The Moment

I just read a wonderful piece on how to change your emotions when you find yourself all caught up in anger at someone or something in particular. The writer said we have two minds, the knowing mind and the unknowing mind. Did you ever notice that when a person is sure they know something how unflexible and unteachable they are. How hard it seems for them, or us, or anyone else, to change our minds when we think “We know.” It is a simply switch really. They, we just need to switch over to our unknowing or questioning mind and look at that person or thing like we didn’t have them or it all figured out and consider all the other possibilities. The truth is we seldom if ever have all the information to know much of anything really anyway. I mean most of our cock sureness is belief, bluster, and salesmanship. If we were really all that sure a differing opinion would not ruffle us so much. That drive like a bull at a red flag to prove the  other wrong and ourself right does not come from certainty but from a not so secret uncertainty or doubt. The harder we argue the less not the more sure we are. The truly wise person can let others figure in out for themselves. The very idea that what you think or believe has to be the only way to look at things really is a silly notion. And one used a great deal by hucksters and con artists to fleece the rubes. Phrases like “You are an intelligent like minded person” usually precede lines like “Now all I need is a credit card number.”

Carrying around grudges or baggage from the past or concentrating too much on the hopes or fears of the future steal our minds and attention away from the moment where all the real magic happens. A phrase that has haunted my imagination for some years now is, “The eternal moment – now.” Last week I quoted but one line from a song sung by Celine Dion over the end credits of the recent Disney live action Beauty And The Beast. The song is called, “How Does A Moment Last Forever” lyrics written by Tim Rice and composed by Alan Menken. Here is the whole song, Tim Rice’s words anyway:

How Does A Moment Last Forever

How does a moment last forever?
How can a story never die?
It is love we must hold onto
Never easy, but we try.
Sometimes our happiness is captured
Somehow our time and place stand still.
Love lives on inside our hearts
And always will.

Minutes turn to hours
Days to years then gone
But when all else has been forgotten
Still our song lives on.

Maybe some moments weren’t so perfect
Maybe some memories not so sweet
But we have to know some bad times
Or our lives are incomplete.
Then when the shadows overtake us
Just when we feel all hope is gone
We’ll hear our song and know once more
Our love lives on.

How does a moment last forever?
How does our happiness endure?
Through the darkest of our troubles
Love is beauty, love is pure.
Love pays no mind to desolation
It flows like a river through the soul,
Protects, precedes, and perseveres
And makes us whole.

Minutes turn to hours
Days to years then gone
But when all else has been forgotten
Still our song lives on.
How does a moment last forever?
When our song lives on.

This song was one of those magic moments I am speaking of. A song from my youth said it so well, “This magic moment so different and so new is like any other since I first found you.” Whether you interpret the “You” in the song to mean God, yourself, or some “special” someonethe meaning is no less clear – each moment is a magical moment made just for you to enjoy,

Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White